Should you promote poor service?
I’ll bet that in about a month, your mailbox will be filled with holiday letters
from friends and relatives bragging about how great their kids are and how
wonderful their lives have been this past year.
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Well, the letter I write this year is going to be a bit different. I’ve decided to break the news that Jenny’s not getting married but will still keep the baby and live with us in her old
room. Josh has finally found employment after being recently released from
prison in June and my wife, Mona, is making great progress in her 12-step
alcoholic recovery program.
And me? Well, you don’t want to know.
The fact is most people don’t listen when you tell them how great you are or how wonderful your business is.
They don’t hear when you say your service is the best around and they would be foolish to
do business with any other cleaner.
They’ve heard it all before. Just for once, why not tell them how poor your service
is? Better yet, let your customer tell everyone what a lousy job you did.
Think I’m crazy? Chet Rowland runs a pest control business in Tampa — the termite capital of the US — and he generates tons of direct mail sales leads by promoting his poor service.
In his direct mail lead generation package he includes a copy of a letter he
received from a disgruntled customer. The customer explains that Chet’s Termite and Pest Control failed to eradicate the customer’s termites, and that she had to request the company to come out and re-fumigate
her home.
But what makes this customer letter different from most complaint letters is
that this customer is writing to say she asked for her money back and got it.
She thanks Chet for honoring what he calls his “exclusive, ironclad, no wiggle room, simple, straightforward guarantee.”
To show potential customers that he keeps his word and honors his guarantees,
Chet includes with this customer letter a photocopy of the refund check he gave
to the unhappy customer. It’s for the full amount of $1,136.
The disgruntled customer goes on to say in her letter that she was thrilled that
she didn’t have to threaten or argue to get Chet to uphold his money back guarantee, and
that she is going to tell her friends and others about how fair, honest and
pleasant Chet’s Termite and Pest Control is to do business with.
Chet says offering super strong guarantees gives him a competitive edge over
other pest control companies. Competitors, he says, don’t have the guts to back what they sell with a money back guarantee. Plus, he
only has to honor his guarantee a few times a year when he refunds his fee to a
few customers that he can’t satisfy.
But the cost of refunding his fee in full a few times a year is worth the
expense because of the extra selling power he gains by promoting his strong
guarantee to potential customers. He says he even gets selling power by showing
off the refund checks.
Can you do the same in your business? Of course!
I know drycleaners who claim to have ironclad guarantees but rarely, if ever,
actually stand behind those guarantees with cash settlements. One exception,
however, was a cleaner from Missouri City, TX, named Terry Ormsby. Terry would
settle claims with no questions asked and instructed the managers in all seven
of his stores to do likewise.
For example, a customer claimed one of his stores lost a pair of suit pants.
Apparently, nothing ever was done about it so the customer quit. At Terry’s request, the store manager asked the customer to buy a new suit with a shirt
and tie to match and bring the bill to the store. He did and was reimbursed on
the spot for $600.
You probably think Terry was nuts… right? Wrong. According to the records, this guy was a regular spender, to the
tune of about $700 every three months. That’s about $2,800 a year. I’m not certain they got the guy back for life, but even if he stayed only five
years that would be about $14,000.
While at a task force meeting some years ago, I asked Terry what his policy on
paying claims was. He said, “It’s ironclad. We pay 100 percent of all claims and we pay them immediately.”
Then I asked him what the wildest claim he ever paid was and he just chuckled.
He had some crazy stories but this one stuck in his mind.
A woman claimed her order was lost and she wanted to be reimbursed for the
clothes. There was no argument. Holiday Cleaners wrote her a check.
But then the store manager, posing as Mrs. “X” began calling other cleaners in the area and guess what? They found the order
and called the woman in to pick up her clothing. When she saw the competitor’s invoice attached, she was embarrassed. Terry had no hard feelings, though, and
the woman was happy to return the money.
Terry never took advantage of the power of personal customer testimonies, but he
could have and had he done so would have profited over and over.
So the question here is, should you promote poor service?
The answer is “Yes.” Let your customers know you’re human. Let them know you make a mistake from time to time but when you do, it
will be taken care of every time — guaranteed!
